Help your heart and save a life with American Heart Month

With Valentine’s Day approaching, it’s important to find another reason to keep the health of your heart and loved ones in mind. As February is recognized as American Heart Month, it’s important to focus on cardiovascular health and learn CPR to help save the life of a loved one.

Dealing with two years of the COVID-19 pandemic creates stress for business owners, employees, and families. According to the American Heart Association, one way to manage stress is to incorporate music into your daily routine, especially an exercise routine. Staying active is one of the best ways to keep your body and mind healthy. Even if not exercising, music can be a great stress reliever. Reducing stress is important as it can lead to depression or anxiety, as well as unhealthy habits like overeating and physical inactivity. Stress also can lead to high blood pressure, increasing the likelihood of heart disease and stroke.

Learning Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation (CPR) is another way you can help a loved one survive a cardiac arrest. Each year, approximately 350,000 persons in the United States experience an out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA) or sudden death; approximately 90% of persons who experience an OHCA die. When a person has a cardiac arrest, survival depends on immediately receiving CPR.

CARES automatically calculates local 911 response intervals, delivery rates for critical interventions (e.g., bystander CPR and publicly accessible Automated External Defibrillator (AED), and community rates of survival and functional status at discharge.

When you dial 9-1-1, the Telecommunicators within the Sumter County Emergency Communication Center are first responders and are the first critical link in the cardiac arrest chain of survival. It is the Telecommunicator, in partnership with the caller, who has the opportunity to identify a patient in cardiac arrest, to provide the initial level of care by delivering telephone CPR (T-CPR) instructions to the caller, and to dispatch the appropriate level of help. It is through these actions that the Telecommunicator makes the difference between life and death.

Sumter County’s Emergency Communications Center monitors the time to recognition of CPR and delivery of T-CPR to help improve cardiac arrest survival rates.

Another way that Sumter County helps improve cardiac arrest outcomes is leveraging the capabilities of PulsePoint, a mobile app that can notify residents that register as CPR knowledgeable volunteers when there is a need in their immediate vicinity as well as identify publicly-accessible AEDs. You can download the PulsePoint app from your app store for free to get started.

If you do not know CPR or want a refresher, you can contact Sumter County at (352) 689-4400 to learn about CPR training opportunities available throughout the county.

For more information on PulsePoint, visit:

https://www.sumtercountyfl.gov/1301/PulsePoint